Authentication is the process by which a first party verifies that a second party is who or what it claims to be. For example, in a computer security context, authentication may include a computer verifying that a user trying to access computing resources is who he claims to be, in this case a person authorized to access those resources. When the user then wants to use that computer to access resources on a server, such as a web service, he may again be required to authenticate himself to the web service. As the number of web services proliferates, the user may need to keep track of a growing list of security credentials for accessing each service. This issue can arise in both the personal computing context, where the user accesses web services for personal reasons, and in the enterprise, where the user may need to access a plurality of enterprise resources, each requiring credentials.
“Single sign-on” (SSO) solutions may be provided to help a user manage security credentials. These may take the form, for example, of a local password repository where a user stores a plurality of passwords, protected by a master password. In the enterprise context, SSO may include configuring client devices to connect to a network where a user's credentials may provide access to a plurality of resources and services.